An enthusiastic Steve Young at Taleo Mexican Grill in Irvine Tuesday night. About 200 supporters attended the election-night party.

An enthusiastic Steve Young at Taleo Mexican Grill in Irvine Tuesday night. About 200 supporters attended the election-night party.

Volunteer precinct officer Kathy So, 50, of Irvine, helps voter Al Nikroo, also 50 and of Irvine, to locate his name in the active-voter roster prior to voting at Turtle Rock School early Tuesday morning.

Republican State Sen. John Campbell is acknowledged by his supporters on Tuesday night in Tustin. He did not receive enough votes to avoid a general election.

But for 4 percentage points, state Sen. John Campbell would be getting on an airplane bound for Washington, D.C., today instead of beginning to plot strategy for the Dec. 6 election to fill Christopher Cox’s House seat.

Campbell easily bested the nine other Republicans vying Tuesday for his party’s nomination for the 48th Congressional District seat, according to unofficial returns released by the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

But the 50-year-old former car dealer, who outspent his opponents in the primary campaign and was endorsed by the GOP establishment, fell short of the 50 percent plus one needed to win the seat outright.

“We always knew that getting over 50 percent with 17 candidates in the field was going to be a very tall order,” Campbell said. “But I’m pleased to have the Republican nomination, and the fact that we beat our nearest competitor by 30 points shows how strong our campaign is and how strongly the voters in this district feel I would be the best person to represent them in Congress.”

The 17-candidate field splintered the vote, the majority of which was cast by an electorate casting absentee ballots in the Republican-dominated district centered in Irvine and Newport Beach.

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project and a third-party candidate, outpolled the top Democratic vote-getter, Irvine lawyer Steve Young, and came close to besting former state Assemblywoman Marilyn Brewer.

“I’m elated,” Gilchrist said. “This is better than expected, and the battle has just begun. As I get more exposure, the numbers will continue to improve.”

Turnout in Tuesday’s election was 20 percent – with nearly 12 percent of the votes cast being either absentees or during early voting. A rough estimate by the Registrar on Tuesday night was that about 1,500 more absentees would be counted today.

Young, who is making his first foray into elective politics, beat out three other Democrats, including UCI business professor John Graham. Graham had tried three successive times to oust Cox, now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Young got the Democratic Party endorsement after convincing party leaders that he would run an aggressive campaign and was willing to invest substantial personal resources in the effort.

“It’s good news, but it could be better,” Young said. “We need to mobilize the Democratic base and get the donors from that base to pony up the money. That’s where the power is in politics.”

Wylie Aitken, head of the Orange County Democratic Foundation and an engineer of Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s 1996 victory over former Rep. Bob Dornan, reluctantly says he doesn’t believe a Democrat has a chance in the 48th.

“I think Young is an outstanding candidate, more in line with the viewpoints of people living in that community,” said Aitken. “But I don’t think he has any chance. What does that tell you about people who have decided to vote along party lines without any regard of what happens to their neighbors and the rest of the country?”

Normally, attention would be focused almost exclusively on these two major party contenders. But Gilchrist’s third-place finish means Campbell’s campaign likely will pay attention to his campaign. Gilchrist’s anti-illegal-immigration message will likely resonate with many of the same voters Campbell will be trying to court.

Gilchrist campaign manager Howie Morgan insisted Tuesday that their campaign will be broad-based.

“We don’t pull for just Republicans,” said Morgan. Immigration, he said, “is the number one issue with Democrats, with Republicans, with Hispanics, the number one issue in Southern California.”

Gilchrist spent relatively little on the primary until the last week, when he ran television and radio ads and sent two mailers to about 90,000 households. A healthy percentage of his contributors came from outside California, in keeping with the nationwide following for his immigration crusade. And he had more donors giving less than $200 each than any of the other candidates, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

In a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats 50.4 to 27 percent, Campbell seems destined for eventual victory. He said Tuesday he believes he will be the next member of Congress from Orange County.

“We’re very confident,” Campbell said after addressing his supporters at Joe’s Garage restaurant in Tustin. “It doesn’t mean we’re not going to run a continuing aggressive campaign, because we will.”

Jack Pitney, political science professor at Claremont-McKenna College, also predicted the GOP will keep this seat. “A loss of this seat by the Republicans would be a major news story,” Pitney said.

Brewer, Campbell’s closest competitor, had hoped to capture Republicans whose views, particularly on social issues, were different than Campbell’s. But mostly, her strategy revolved around getting Democrats and independents to cross over and vote for her in the open primary format. But she could not overcome the large GOP enrollment and intense absentee ballot campaign that the Campbell camp ran.

Like Campbell, Brewer self-funded part of her effort, plowing $350,000 of her own money into the race.

“We needed some more breaks to go our way and we needed another Republican in the race and things would have been different,” Brewer said Tuesday after the final results were in. “We ran a good race and stuck to our plan.”

Martin Wisckol has been the Orange County Register's politics writer and weekly Buzz columnist since 1998, and now writes about politics for all papers in the Southern California Newspaper Group. He was given the title of politics editor in 2011 to reflect his expanded role in planning political coverage. Wisckol started his career writing about surfing and jazz, but has written predominantly about government and politics since 1985. He has held reporting positions in his hometown of San Diego, as well as in Detroit, Jacksonville and Miami. Along the way, he has put in extended stints in Japan, South America and Switzerland. His work has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Headliner Awards, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Florida Press Club, among others. He continues lifelong pursuits of surfing, traveling and playing guitar.

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